Diary of a Shopkeeper, 25th July
‘I can’t afford no liquor, all I can afford is beer and wine.’ BB King
The number of visitors to Orkney seems to be balanced out by the number of Orcadians south on holiday. So there’s no chance of us sinking under the waves from excess baggage, not just yet.
Never mind the holidays, it’s not unusual for regular customers to disappear for weeks or even months at a time. All it needs is for someone in the house to get a bit anxious – about an underlying health condition, or even just age – and the whole family shuts themselves away, buying online and avoiding town centre shops.
We miss their company, and their custom.
But it’s doubly pleasurable when they finally come in the door again.
So it was that I couldn’t help smiling when Bruce Brass walked into the shop on Friday. I don’t always feel that way, as Bruce’s conversation can be as corrosive as battery acid. But even a shilpit face can be welcome if you haven’t seen it for a while.
‘Hi aye Bruce,’ I said, ‘Good to see you. It’s been a while. Everybody fine?’
‘Pear cider kit,’ said Bruce, quietly. ‘Syphon tube. Corks.’
‘Been busy? Or just lying low? Must’ve been back at the start of the year you were last in – about the last time we saw some rain!’
‘Twelve bottles,’ he replied in a whisper, ‘And a bag of enhancer.’
I finished gathering up everything he wanted and scanned it into the till. ‘Time to get a brew on the go, Bruce? This weather’s making a lot of drooth.’
He looked over his shoulder, then leaned towards me – too far and too fast, so he banged his forehead on the Perspex screen. After recoiling a bit, he checked again that the shop was empty and growled out of the side of his mouth: ‘Keep your voice down, beuy. Did you no hear it’s against the byelaws to brew these days?’
‘What? That can’t be right. There’s no way the government would ban homebrewing.’
‘Ach, it’s not that lot. It’s the council.’ I could see Bruce wrinkling his nose in disgust under his mask. ‘King James and Co have decreed: due to the drought, no watering the garden, no washing the car, and no home brewing. And if you want a bath you have to share it with the wife. Terrible! Luckily this isn’t the month for my bath.’
I let that pass. But I couldn’t let the homebrew thing go. After all, my illustrious forebear, James Kirkness, was put on trial for inadvertently smuggling barrels of gin into the shop in the 1870s. I didn’t want to be arrested for breaching homebrew regulations I’d never even heard of.
‘I read about not watering your garden,’ I said. ‘My tatties don’t like it, but I’ve explained to them there were good reasons and I think they can cope. But a ban on brewing? That’s a new one!’
‘I wouldn’t have heard of it myself if my pal BB King hadn’t told me about it.’
‘BB King? Blues Boy? The famous singer?’
‘No! Beer Barrel King – the finest homebrewer in the south parish.’
‘Hold on. To make ten litres of beer you surely use ten litres of water. It’s H2O neutral! They couldn’t ban homebrewing any more than they could ban drinking water.’
‘Ha! I wouldn’t put it past that lot in School Place,’ he snarled. ‘Nothing but Champagne passes their lips!’
I laughed. ‘I doubt that very much. And if it’s true, they certainly don’t buy it here.’
‘I’ll explain it to you the same way BB explained it to me. Okay. How do you feel if you‘ve had four or five pints?’
‘Happy?’
‘Aye, but in the morning, the day after, how do you feel?’
‘Thirsty!’
‘Exactly. And what do you do?’
‘Have a drink out of the tap.’
‘Correct again. For every pint of beer you drink, you consume an extra half pint of water the day after. And it’s nearly the same in litres.’
‘It would be.’
‘Brewing isn’t H2O neutral: it teums Kirbister at a tremendous rate. Especially the way BB King drinks it.’
I frowned. Something was coming back to me. ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘This BB King. Is he a tall lanky guy with a nose as long as a whaup?’
‘Aye! That’s the secret to his brewing success: he can get his neb right into the barrel to sniff how the barm’s getting on.’
‘I met him! It was years ago, we were both having a drink in the QB, which’ll tell you how long ago it was. Anyway, when he nodded for another pint, I notice he was footering about with some tissue paper, trying to stuff it into his empty glass. ‘I’m intrigued,’ I said. He looked down his long nose at me, and winked. ‘Regina Blitz paper towels,’ he said. ‘Super absorbent. So when the boy pours me a pint, the paper soaks up half of it. And he keeps on pouring and pouring. And I get a pint and a half for the price of one!’’
‘That’s brilliant,’ said Bruce. ‘What happened?’
‘When the barman took his glass, he chucked the tissue in the bin, gave BB a new glass, and he got the pint he paid for – not a drop more.’
‘I doot that’s when he turned homebrewing!’
‘To be honest, Bruce,’ I said, indicating the credit card machine, which was feeling a bit left out, ‘I don’t think I’d take BB King’s word on anything much.’
Bruce shook his head as he pushed his card into the slot. ‘All I can say is no other body has explained the cause of the drought as well as BB.’
‘It’s the lack of rain, surely,’ I said, ‘And the wind wheesking away any moisture there is.’
‘That’s what they want you to believe,’ said Bruce, ‘But BB gave me the rights of it.’ He looked over his shoulder again.
‘Really,’ he continued, ‘It’s because the water’s all running off the edges of the earth.’
I looked at him. ‘I can’t argue with that,’ I said.
In case you’re worried, Bruce Brass is completely wrong (not for the first time) and there is no ban on hombrewing in Orkney. K&G continues to do a roaring trade in all you need to make your own beer, wine or indeed pear cider…
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 28th July. Other diaries continue to appear weekly. I am posting them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.